Business is business (financing the candidates)

Like everywhere else in the world, in USA the bourgeoisie fiancés its parties and its candidates. The difference is that, while in other countries efforts are made to keep these links concealed, American legislation demands that everything is to be overt and documented. In this way, page www.opensecretas.org offers a very interesting summary of data, classified by braches of economy, of all the corporations that most contribute, how much each candidate received, etc.

There we found out, for example that, until May 2008, all the “eventual nominees received over 500 million dollars, quite a record” distributed as follows.

Barack Obama. $265 439 277

Hilary Clinton:  $ 214 883 437

John Cain:       $ 96. 654 483[1]

Analysing the historic sequence, we can see how between 2006 and 2008, a “shift” was taking place of some Republican contributions to the Democrats and how the contributions for Obama grew until he surfaced at the top of the list.

Such data also allow us to analyse which sector each of the candidates is most solidly linked to – Even if the corporations are known to “put an egg in each basket”. Taking into account the percentage of the contributions of each party, the republicans are normally supported by the oil companies (73%), car manufacturing (68) chemistry (68) construction (62) and agribusiness (almost 60%). Democrats, on the other hand, are strong in the area of education (72%) and health (55%) – The sector of finances, insurance, estate, the branch of economy that most finances the different campaigns (248 million) granted them 54%. Among the great concerns of the sector, the Democratic preferences are clear: Goldman Sachs gave them 73% of the nearly 3.7 million contributed; Citigroup the 61% of 3 million and Morgan Chase the 64% of 2.5.

[1] The contributions for the Democrats were more concentrate than those of the Republicans. For example: among the latter, it was Mitt Rommey who received the most (nearly 105 million) and the third place was taken by the former New York mayor, Giuliani, with 54 million.